An incident at the French bistro called Cedric at 185th St. Nicholas Avenue and 119th Street has gained a lot of media coverage since it reflects the conflicts of Harlem in a period of gentrification.

It was a busy Saturday night at the bistro Cedric in Harlem. A party of four with a 7:30 reservation walked in. The owner, Cedric Lecendre, asked another party, four women who had been at Tables 2 and 3 for a couple of hours, to move to tables that were closer to the entrance and the kitchen. He seated the party with the reservation at Tables 2 and 3.

The women who switched tables ordered more wine and dessert and stayed for almost three more hours. When they asked for the check, the four women, who were black, accused Mr. Lecendre of having moved them to make room for the people with the reservation, who were white. One of the women, Mignon Espy-Edwards, a marketing executive, said that they were angry, but that race was not the main reason. She said the other people “had purchased a condo and were friends of his.”

The party Ms. Espy-Edwards belonged to arrived around 4 p.m. “Our table had rotated with friends coming in and out,” Ms. Espy-Edwards recalled Tuesday, and shortly before Mr. Lecendre asked them to move, they paid the check, only to open another tab as a few more people arrived. One who was there early on but left before the table switch was Rosamonde Pierre-Louis, the deputy Manhattan borough president.

When Mr. Lecendre asked them to move, “We graciously gave up our seats,” they wrote in the letter to The Amsterdam News, describing the second table as “cramped seating” by the kitchen, bathroom and one of the restaurant’s entrances.

The letter also said that when they asked Mr. Lecendre why they had been moved, he said the people he seated in the front “were ‘regulars’ and he knew them, which is why he felt the need to accommodate them.”

According to the letter, when the women told Mr. Lecendre that they were repeat customers and longtime Harlem residents, “he responded, ‘I do not care about longtime residents of Harlem, I am running a business.’ ”

Mr. Lecendre said that was only a part of his response when Ms. Espy-Edwards questioned him about how he decided where to seat customers. “The answer I told Mignon was, ‘I don’t care about Harlem, I don’t care about black or white, I don’t care about man or woman, I don’t care if you have money or not — when you come in that door, everyone is equal,” he said at the restaurant on Tuesday.

Ms. Espy-Edwards said Mr. Lecendre had sent her and the other women an apology last week, but he did not explain his comment about moving them to make room for his regulars.

One of responses to four women go nuclear on Cedric French Bistor in Harlem.

The Chinese came to the USA in the 19th Century, mostly to either mine for gold in California, or to work on the railroads. The Chinese have dealt with nothing but Racism for over 150 years, yet they endure, they form their own communities, the create their own economies, and they prosper. No Chinese person will ever blame white people for the state of their culture nor for their standard of living. To consider any group of Asians, particularly east Asians, they consistently prosper here in the USA. For them it is the land of opportunity. You can look at many immigrant groups to NYC and USA in general. They often prosper. Greeks, Italians, Arabs, Turks, Armenians, Ukrainians, all these people came from difficult circumstances, yet they strive and they succeed. Even with all of the opportunities afforded to AA’s, especially under the EEOC (equal opportunity programs) which encourage and even demand racial quotas in the workplace; even with loads of public housing (meaning practically free) and Food Stamps (more free stuff), and with easily acquired funding for schools via grants and loans, even with all these advantages and opportunities to enter the workforce, still, African Americans form the basis of most Ghettos and Urban Blight in America today. Black People- You Failed. Blame the Heroin, Blame the Crack, Blame Institutional Racism, Blame Whitey, Blame the Chinks, Blame the Spics, Blame the Irish. Go into an AA’s house and count the Books. How many? Maybe One. Most likely there is a Bible in the house.

I think that may be the most ignorant and racist thing I have seen written in a LONG time.

By the way, the food is great! Try Tuna Tartar – the way in which Cedric seasoned the tuna and placed it on top of delicious guacamole made the dish utterly irresistible. The Escargot, Foie Gras, Chilean Seabass are highly recommended.